Brian Hoyer’s contract has a decent upside

Veteran quarterback Brian Hoyer heads to San Francisco as, for now, the best option they have under contract. If he holds that spot and performs well, he will be paid accordingly.

Per a source with knowledge of the contract, it includes up to $1.5 million in 2017 incentives based on playing time, passing yards, passing touchdowns, and qualification for the Pro Bowl. For 2018, the deal has up to $5 million in incentives based on the same factors. That’s a total of $6.5 million in extra money that can be earned under the deal with a base value of $12 million over two years.

Hoyer receives a $4 million signing bonus, a fully-guaranteed base salary of $2.95 million for 2017, a $3.95 million base salary in 2018, $2.9 million of which is fully guaranteed. That’s $9.85 million in fully guaranteed cash at signing.

Hoyer has another $800,000 tied to per-game roster bonuses, which works out to $25,000 for each game that he is on the 46-man roster.

At a base rate of $6 million per year, Hoyer would be the lowest-paid starting quarterback on a veteran contract, if he wins the job. Even if he unlocks every penny of his incentives in 2017 and 2018, he’ll make $9.25 million per year on average.

That said, a Pro Bowl-type season for Hoyer in 2017 likely would result in the 31-year-old getting a new contract entering 2018.

16 responses to “Brian Hoyer’s contract has a decent upside”

Don’t know if anyone has actually looked at Hoyer’s numbers in the last 17 games. But, there pretty good. Granted he can’t stay healthy. But, they really are “Alex Smith” like when Alex started this second chapter of his career from a awful start.

It was weird, and kind of nice, when he was playing last year for the Bears to not hold my breath every pass waiting for it to be intercepted. But then once you realized he literally can’t throw more than 20 yards with velocity to any part of the field and has no deep ball to stretch the field at all, you started seeing how small the call sheet gets with him and the appeal kind of wore off.

There have been quarterbacks who took years as mediocre starters, backups, and/or journeymen before excelling. Rich Gannon and Doug Williams come to mind. Hoyer has showed enough to think it could happen.